Over the past few months we’ve been working hard on making our
Zoho Projects interface flexible and easy-to-use, based on the suggestions sent by our customers. We had announced these changes on our homepage and you might have noticed the preview at http://preprojects.zoho.com. Today we’re delighted to announce the redesigned user interface of Zoho Projects along with some exciting features.

We know that you use Zoho Projects for building your business by connecting with your project teams and clients. Now we want to make your work life easier with a more appealing user interface so that you can plan, communicate and collaborate more efficiently than ever before.
Here’s a quick summary of what’s new in this release:

Tasks & MilestonesEasy-to-use interface for task management and enhanced task details page with more information – task notes, log hours, dependency, recent updates. In addition, you can have a detailed visual view of your open and closed tasks, task lists and milestones as task reports.

Import your Contacts
Import your contacts and users from your Zoho CRM and Zoho Business
account in few easy steps. From Zoho CRM, you can now import your project as well as client users for your project portal. This way you can quickly add bulk users with ease.

Contextual Reports
We’ve removed the Reports tab. No Worries! Instead, you can instantly view reports contextually in the respective tabs. Like the Gantt View and Task Reports under Tasks and Milestones. And Bug, Timesheet & File upload statistics in the respective tabs.

Custom Filters for Bugs
Start creating your own custom filters based on users, severity, status, priority and create your views based on these filters in the Bugs module of Zoho Projects.

Project Dashboard & Group Chat
Project Dashboard got spiced up with task progress and bug status reports along with the project overview. When you visit the chat tab, you can find chat rooms to select and start your discussions right away.

We’d already received a couple of encouraging tweets on this new release

Play around with the new user interface available at http://www.zoho.com/projects and we’d love to hear your views and ideas on the new Zoho Projects. Please let us know what you think either in the comments section or mail us at support@zohoprojects.com.

Celina 6 years ago

Hi Mike,Thank you for your kind words… 🙂 Nice to hear you are using both Projects and CRM for your business.We’d design the product in such a way it is easy to setup and use so that it improves productivity and helps attain maximum efficiency at work.We always strive to improve the customer experience in Zoho Projects, so they spend quality time at work which adds more value for a work-life balance and above all deliver the best possible service for their customers. Thank you for recommending GTD of David Allen, we’ll definetly take few important pointers from his book and will apply them in our product.1. Ability to group projects in to folders/groups/topics. I see the “by company” grouping option. Anyway for work around using this field as a category name until a fix?>>> Our developers are already working on this feature and will get implemented by mid July 2011.2. I like having the current ability to shift the project order as an organizational tool, but every project manager and every employ has follow my “order”. We need the ability to manage this on a user level to allow them to be most effective. Could keep the main order just offer a “my order” in addition.>>> Since implementing this feature requires some data model tweaks we need some more time. I can’t assure you the exact timeline but we can make sure that it gets implemented by this year end.Once the first item is resolved, the second item is not as urgent, but allowing user to have the personal reordering view with in the projects folders would be ideal.Thank you for listing to our requests!Is there a place I can see features that will be released in the next update and when that update is scheduled?>>> For latest product updates you can check our Zoho blogs. Just grab a RSS feed and you can get latest updates posted in our blogs.We’re all ears listening to our customer requests and feel free to send your valuable suggestions, ideas anytime to support@zohoprojects.com

Celina 6 years ago

Hi Mike,Thank you for your kind words… 🙂 Nice to hear you are using both Projects and CRM for your business.We’d design the product in such a way it is easy to setup and use so that it improves productivity and helps attain maximum efficiency at work.We always strive to improve the customer experience in Zoho Projects, so they spend quality time at work which adds more value for a work-life balance and above all deliver the best possible service for their customers. Thank you for recommending GTD of David Allen, we’ll definetly take few important pointers from his book and will apply them in our product.1. Ability to group projects in to folders/groups/topics. I see the “by company” grouping option. Anyway for work around using this field as a category name until a fix?>>> Our developers are already working on this feature and will get implemented by mid July 2011.2. I like having the current ability to shift the project order as an organizational tool, but every project manager and every employ has follow my “order”. We need the ability to manage this on a user level to allow them to be most effective. Could keep the main order just offer a “my order” in addition.>>> Since implementing this feature requires some data model tweaks we need some more time. I can’t assure you the exact timeline but we can make sure that it gets implemented by this year end.Once the first item is resolved, the second item is not as urgent, but allowing user to have the personal reordering view with in the projects folders would be ideal.Thank you for listing to our requests!Is there a place I can see features that will be released in the next update and when that update is scheduled?>>> For latest product updates you can check our Zoho blogs. Just grab a RSS feed and you can get latest updates posted in our blogs.We’re all ears listening to our customer requests and feel free to send your valuable suggestions, ideas anytime to support@zohoprojects.com

Mike 6 years ago

We are using zoho projects in conjunction with zoho CRM and google apps.To start…this product is amazing! It’s transforming our company and we look forward to seeing continued innovation. I have a few urgent requests, and a suggestion. My requests are are seemingly simple in nature, but a release of just the first change will improve the base organizational ability and allow more effective management of large project volumes. These two items are a current source of frustration for team.Recommendation….Have your entire team listen or read Getting Things Done, by David Allen. It’s an amazing guide to “organization” and getting information in to a “trusted system”. You have obviously taken in to account many of these principles, but some of the base concepts if applied would take Zoho to magical level. A read of this will give you more ideas as to why these requests are critical.Urgent Requests…..The first one would solve a lot of my problems fast, it and the second urgentrequest would take the product to the next level for my teams in an instant.1. Ability to group projects in to folders/groups/topics. I see the “by company” grouping option. Anyway for work around using this field as a category name until a fix?2. I like having the current ability to shift the project order as an organizational tool, but every project manager and every employ has follow my “order”. We need the ability to manage this on a user level to allow them to be most effective. Could keep the main order just offer a “my order” in addition.Once the first item is resolved, the second item is not as urgent, but allowing user to have the personal reordering view with in the projects folders would be ideal.Thank you for listing to our requests!Is there a place I can see features that will be released in the next update and when that update is scheduled?Thank you!

Mike 6 years ago

We are using zoho projects in conjunction with zoho CRM and google apps.To start…this product is amazing! It’s transforming our company and we look forward to seeing continued innovation. I have a few urgent requests, and a suggestion. My requests are are seemingly simple in nature, but a release of just the first change will improve the base organizational ability and allow more effective management of large project volumes. These two items are a current source of frustration for team.Recommendation….Have your entire team listen or read Getting Things Done, by David Allen. It’s an amazing guide to “organization” and getting information in to a “trusted system”. You have obviously taken in to account many of these principles, but some of the base concepts if applied would take Zoho to magical level. A read of this will give you more ideas as to why these requests are critical.Urgent Requests…..The first one would solve a lot of my problems fast, it and the second urgentrequest would take the product to the next level for my teams in an instant.1. Ability to group projects in to folders/groups/topics. I see the “by company” grouping option. Anyway for work around using this field as a category name until a fix?2. I like having the current ability to shift the project order as an organizational tool, but every project manager and every employ has follow my “order”. We need the ability to manage this on a user level to allow them to be most effective. Could keep the main order just offer a “my order” in addition.Once the first item is resolved, the second item is not as urgent, but allowing user to have the personal reordering view with in the projects folders would be ideal.Thank you for listing to our requests!Is there a place I can see features that will be released in the next update and when that update is scheduled?Thank you!

Celina 6 years ago

Hi,Is there an option to forecast hours for a task?>>> Our development team is already working on this feature. We’ll add this in one of our immediate updates and will keep you informed.Also, I have a project plan in Excel, can this be imported into a Zoho task list?>>> We do not support this import option now. We’ve made a note and will provide it in one of our future updates.With Regards,Celina

Celina 6 years ago

Hi,Is there an option to forecast hours for a task?>>> Our development team is already working on this feature. We’ll add this in one of our immediate updates and will keep you informed.Also, I have a project plan in Excel, can this be imported into a Zoho task list?>>> We do not support this import option now. We’ve made a note and will provide it in one of our future updates.With Regards,Celina

Celina 6 years ago

Celina 6 years ago

Hi Ram,Thanks for a good suggestion.We do not support this in the current time tracking module and have plans to provide this option in one of our future updates.Please bear with us till then.Regards,Celina

Celina 6 years ago

Hi Ram,Thanks for a good suggestion.We do not support this in the current time tracking module and have plans to provide this option in one of our future updates.Please bear with us till then.Regards,Celina

Ramprasad 6 years ago

chuck_sena 7 years ago

Actually, I played around with the Projects/CRM integration and found that the integration is even less than I thought.I was wrong in my initial understanding about using the ZSC Key. I do only have to use once (The good news). However, the only e-mail addresses it allows me to access are those of the CRM subscribers/users from my company. There is no way to access the e-mail addresses of any of the contacts in the CRM database.I am impatiently awaiting a more complete integration between Projects and CRM. Once it happens I think this will be a very exciting development that will have tremendous benefit for our company.

chuck_sena 7 years ago

Actually, I played around with the Projects/CRM integration and found that the integration is even less than I thought.I was wrong in my initial understanding about using the ZSC Key. I do only have to use once (The good news). However, the only e-mail addresses it allows me to access are those of the CRM subscribers/users from my company. There is no way to access the e-mail addresses of any of the contacts in the CRM database.I am impatiently awaiting a more complete integration between Projects and CRM. Once it happens I think this will be a very exciting development that will have tremendous benefit for our company.

chuck_sena 7 years ago

I have been keeping an eye on the integration between Project and CRM. If I understand your update notes the only integration is to provide a way to export e-mail addresses from CRM to Proejcts. But in order to the this you have to get a key for each address.If my understanding is correct then this is a solution that is worse than the problem. It is a lot easier to simply cut and paste between open browser windows than it is to go through the process you have developed.Also, the real integration I am waiting for between CRM and Projects will be when you can easily transfer attachments, quotes and Potentials Data from CRM to Project using a Wizard.

chuck_sena 7 years ago

I have been keeping an eye on the integration between Project and CRM. If I understand your update notes the only integration is to provide a way to export e-mail addresses from CRM to Proejcts. But in order to the this you have to get a key for each address.If my understanding is correct then this is a solution that is worse than the problem. It is a lot easier to simply cut and paste between open browser windows than it is to go through the process you have developed.Also, the real integration I am waiting for between CRM and Projects will be when you can easily transfer attachments, quotes and Potentials Data from CRM to Project using a Wizard.

Chris 7 years ago

I don’t see the Google apps users integration (adding my google apps users to my project.) Has this been removed? Or could it be that I just set up ZOHO Projects for my Google Apps account and it takes time for this feature to be enabled? Or is it only available for paid accounts (I’m testing the free account now).Thanks

Chris 7 years ago

I don’t see the Google apps users integration (adding my google apps users to my project.) Has this been removed? Or could it be that I just set up ZOHO Projects for my Google Apps account and it takes time for this feature to be enabled? Or is it only available for paid accounts (I’m testing the free account now).Thanks